THE LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET

Roger Watkins,
USA,
1977, Vinegar Syndrome

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET will rip your dick off and shit on it.

“One of the ultimate feel-bad movies of all time, this surrealist horror film plays out equally with shades of De Sade, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, and Seventies experimental film tendencies. Shot in ‘72 with a pseudonymous cast and crew, it was long rumored the film contained footage of real murders until director Watkins (credited as Victor Janos in the film) came out years later on an Internet message board veryfing he was the film’s creator. Upon his release from prison, Terry (Watkins) decides to break into the film industry by recruiting amateur actors and filmmakers to help him create the ultimate snuff film. Choosing an abandoned college as the site of his film, Terry and his crew set about on a demented quest to get revenge on society by documenting the murders of four strangers.” (Belcourt Theatre)

“Is it a secret avant-garde wonder, marrying a cynical critique of spectatorship with a proto-punk sense of dirtbag poetics -- or a woefully cheap, nihilistic drive-in slot-filler playing only to the most perverted and gore-hungry? That it manages to be both of these things, lobbing stink bombs at both the arthouse and grindhouse crowds, speaks to Watkins's peculiar, uniquely unsettling vision. DEAD END STREET has developed a justly earned reputation for being something special, an underground horror film as scummy as it is artful.” (Music Box Theatre)